


hold you by the edges

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Depression, M/M, Post-Sburb, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're both broken.  He's just better at hiding it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold you by the edges

**Author's Note:**

> All I can write any more is Karkat angst. Send help.

**= > CG: Examine inventory.**

 

Here is what you have:

\- A small apartment barely a block from campus.

\- A case of what Rose says is severe depression.

\- Each other.

 

 **= > CG: Get out of bed.**

 

You can't get out of bed. You suppose you could, if you had the strength. You can imagine the sensation of your body pulling itself up, out from under the sleeping bag that currently serves as your blankets, but when you try and recreate the motion outside of your head you come up woefully short. Maybe it's something to do with the invisible weight that you can feel pressing down on your chest, pinning you. Limiting you.

 

Eventually you manage to roll yourself to your feet, still clutching the sleeping bag around you like some kind of godawful nylon cape, and drag yourself into what passes for a kitchen in an apartment of this size - a fridge, a microwave, a stove that doesn't even bother to work three quarters of the time. There isn't a table. You throw a Pop-Tart in the microwave, don't even have the patience to warm it up fully before you grab it, stuff it in your mouth and flop down on the couch to watch shitty daytime TV.

 

Except the TV isn't daytime. The five o'clock news is on, something about a fire in the next city over. A woman ran in to save her cat, the newscaster says. She died in the hospital an hour later due to smoke inhalation. Somehow, the entire morning and afternoon have slipped by you, in the timeless blur of hours since John left for his classes. You don't think you even slept through them, except for a few fleeting moments of rest. Mostly you're pretty sure you just stared at the wall, clutching a pillow to your chest, curled in on yourself as if you're trying to make yourself small enough to just disappear. Five fucking o'clock. That's eight entire hours you've spent doing nothing but feeling sorry for yourself. Suddenly, the idea of finishing the Pop-Tart is utterly repulsive; you feel hollowed out and empty inside and imagine the half-digested bites of toaster pastry rattling around inside that emptiness and the thought makes you feel sick. Eight hours you've spent being nothing but useless. A complete and utter fucking waste of space who can't do anything but lie in bed stewing in your own self-pity.

 

Your communication device - John says it's called a cell phone, a phrase you're not entirely used to yet - buzzes in your pocket. It's John. He's almost done at the university, he says. He'll be home soon, and by the way, are you doing all right? You text back yeah, you're fine, why the fuck wouldn't you be? You think of him, out there, lugging his textbook-heavy backpack between classes, stretching nearly out of his seat to raise his hand in answer to a professor's question. You think of all the nights you've sat on the couch watching him bent over some brick of a book, focused intently on the pages. He's living, he's surviving. He's making something of himself even though he's lost everything. Maybe more than you have - no, definitely more. There's still a box of his favorite mac-and-cheese hiding in a back corner of the kitchen cupboard. You toss a pot down on the stove, try and make yourself useful before he gets back. The least you can do.

 

 **= > CG: Time-skip ahead a month. **

You can't time-skip ahead a month, because that would not fit the narrative structure of this particular part of your life.

 

 **= > CG: Oh, fine. Twenty-four days, one hour, and six minutes exactly, then. **

That's more like it.

 

You don't have many belongings. Most of the - already few in number - items in your apartment are John's, or more likely Dave's that he's left here so long they've become John's by process of osmosis. You can cram all your stuff into the backpack John helped you pick out when you still believed you could make it through college like a semi-functional person, smaller things - lip balm, spare change, your mostly-empty wallet that only really exists to house your library card - stuffed into the pockets of your coat. Your whole existence, small enough that you can swing it over your back like a snail-shell.

 

You imagine that John will be sad, at first, when he realizes you're gone. That's the part you aren't so sure about, and you try not to think about the way his face might fall when he comes home to an empty apartment. But it's better for him this way, you're sure of it. No freakish, useless troll to look after any more. No pathetic depression case weighing him down. He can graduate college, get a job and a girlfriend and a house with a white picket fence and a dog. Eventually he'll forget all about you. You hope that he will, anyway.

 

You finish lacing up your shoes, give the straps of your backpack one last tug and head for the door. You want to turn around, take in one last eyefull of the apartment, say a proper goodbye maybe, but something tells you that if you do that, you'll lose your nerve. Better to walk straight out the door and never look back, like a romantic comedy heroine walking away from the man who just wasn't right for her when her love interest leads her to realize what she really wants. It's a shitty metaphor, but it's the best you can do under pressure.

 

But before you can pull a rom-com cliche, the door swings open, and for one wild second you think the apartment itself is telling you to leave, making it that tiny bit simpler for you, beckoning you out - but no, there's John, biology text tucked under one arm, his eyes darting from the stuffed-full bag slung over your shoulders to the unseasonably thick coat you're wearing to the absence of your various hoodies and sweaters draped over furniture the way they've been for months.

 

The door clicks shut, softly, behind him. The textbook falls from his arm with a carpeted thump. And John - it's like all the bones in his legs just disappear; he sinks to the ground as if he doesn't have the will to keep himself standing any more.

 

Like a bullet through your heart, you realize with piercing clarity that holy fuck, John Egbert is crying.

 

You've never seen him cry before. Not even at the makeshift memorial service Rose insisted on having for their fallen guardians. Then he'd just smiled, sadly but still an obvious upwards turn to the corners of his mouth, smiled at Rose and Dave and Jade and said that's what his father would have wanted. For him to remember his life, the good things, not his body lying bloody on the chess-board ground. You'd known he was lying - maybe you all had. You'd heard the thumping from his room that night, saw the scrapes on his knuckles the next morning from punching the wall over, and over, and over again until speckles of blood appeared.

 

And here he is now, sunk to his knees before you, his shoulders - no, his whole body shaking with sobs and strangled gasps and you suddenly start to worry that he'll just stop breathing, and before you know what your own body's doing your backpack and coat are discarded to the floor and you're kneeling next to him, hand on his shoulder as firmly as you dare. You want to pull him close, take all the sadness in him into yourself and keep it there. Keep him safe. Let him hold up the illusion that he's fine for a little while longer, because seeing him like this - this open sadness - scares the everloving fuck out of you.

 

"Shhh," you realize you're whispering to him as your arm finds its way around his back and his face finds its way to the crook of your neck and shoulder, "shhh, it's fine, Egb- _John_ \- I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

 

You can't entirely make out what he's saying in between sobs, but you think you hear a "please" in there. More than one. "Please don't go," he's saying, "please don't go" and his arms are wrapped around you, clinging to you as if the world's spinning off its axis and you are the one thing keeping him from spiralling off into the depths of space.

 

"I won't," you promise him, and shit, you think you're crying too, droplets of red welling up in your eyes. " _Fuck_ , John, I'm sorry-"

 

He tries to laugh, but it comes out choked and bitter, more a scoff. "Stop fucking saying you're sorry."

 

"But I'm-"

 

His grip on you tightens, fingers digging in to your back. "I said stop saying it."

 

"Sorry, I'll stop."

 

" _Stoooop_ ," and now his shoulders are shaking with laughter instead, and you might be chuckling a little bit too, yourself, and he rolls back on the floor, pulling you on top of him, and you're not sure how long you spend lying there with your head on his chest laughing until neither of you can breathe properly, but when you've both caught your breath and you're finally lying still, your fingers are entwined together and somehow, you just know that neither one of you wants to be the first to let go.


End file.
